Best Of

Yes it was two separate living spaces. 2000 sq ft 1st floor and the same for the second. Customer is making the whole building one house. The plan is to keep the two boiler systems. They plan on doing the first floor, living there while the 2nd is being worked on. Once the ceiling comes down we can trace the pipes out to see what boiler did what floor. The 95% of the radiators have the Webster Vari valve on the steam supply. All rads have traps that need to be refreshed. Luckily it looks like the vent traps and condensate hasn't been butchered.

Got a call from a customer that put purchased a two flat home and they were starting to restore the home. Talked to the customer who informed me they needed new boilers and wanted to keep the steam system. Go take a look and found a cool Webster system. The boilers have seen better days to say the least, but all the radiators are surprisingly in decent shape. We are going to reevaluate the system once they get asbestos removed and the basement ceiling. This one's going to be a fun project to bring back to life.

I think I did 6 skims, and then finally gave up and used the wand followed by a skim.

I used to know how many almost full 5 gallon buckets I did………it was a lot.

I believe I did the detergent treatment too late in the game.
Should have read the instructions more carefully.

By the time I put the trisodium phosphate in there, I'd probably thrown the oils all over my main and maybe beyond. So I shouldn't complain it took a long time to come back.

All's well that ends well.

Mid-Michigan has another five to six weeks of heating season left, and I figured it's time to bring the water to the proper condition for the summer break.

Step 1 — I skimmed again, for the 18th time per my sharpie marks on the side of the boiler. Top-notch record keeping. The boiler wasn't surging per se, but the water line was still receding more a little too much for my taste, maybe a couple gallons, maybe 2.5 gallons… a gallon being about 1.25 inches in my site glass.

There was STILL some muck on top of the water, but it only covered maybe a quarter of the surface, with gaps everywhere. This leads me to believe that the oil is effectively gone. Took long enough.

This time I skimmed using a bucket, a siphon hose, and pre-boiled hot water, so as not to introduce oxygenated water and also keep the water hot while skimming. A noble effort, to be sure, that turned into a waste of time in the end.

Here's an image showing how far the water retreated less than 24 hours after skimming. This is still just water, with no chemicals introduced. The gallon scale is from the first time I filled the boiler; the spacing is uneven but it's good enough to get an idea what's going on.

That's been the standard; the water line retreates about 1.5 gallons worth, or 1-3/4 inches on the glass.

The Webster "Modulation" system didn't use a Return Trap. The "Type R" system did. Both used Vent Traps.

Why bother ? Since (unless I missed it) there are no radiators from where the smaller 'Copper Main' connects into the larger normal Main to where the loop seal is, you don't need steam there, It is like a dead end street with no houses that still needs storm sewers so the unused street won't flood allowing the water to migrate out into the other connecting street.

Now if you want to also put a steam trap there or an additional vent to enhance overall system venting (which the system probably needs) I am fine with that too.

I would not just remove the loop seal as others suggested, unless that section of the Main is pitched to drain away from the newly made dead end (basically counter flow). Since there is no other drips to a wet return in that area where is the condensate in the Main going to go ? All the way back to the boiler through the Main. The normal Main would be 1/3 ish full of condensate by the time it would drain into the smaller 'Copper Main'.

It is hard to tell but the Main looks like it fairly level and I believe it was intended to be parallel flow. So you need to deal with the condensate at that part of the system and not allow steam to enter the dry return.

EDIT: Presently the Loop Seal vents no air, unless the steam pressure is high enough to push it through the loop seal, maybe by design ? It definitely would not vent any air if removed.

Vent #3 in the pictures looks like a radiator vent anyways, not a main vent.